Where did the enormous protoplanet come from?
Belbruno and Gott believe it came from a Sun-Earth Lagrange point. Sun-Earth Lagrange points are regions of space where the pull of the Sun and Earth combine to form a “gravitational well.” The flotsam of space tends to gather there much as water gathers at the bottom of a well on Earth. 18th-century mathematician Josef Lagrange proved that there are five such wells in the Sun-Earth system: L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5 located as shown in the diagram below. When the solar system was young, Lagrange points were populated mainly by planetesimals, the asteroid-sized building blocks of planets. Belbruno and Gott suggest that in one of the Lagrange points, L4 or L5, the planetesimals assembled themselves into Theia, nicknamed after the mythological Greek Titan who gave birth to the Moon goddess Selene. Above: Sun-Earth Lagrange points. The STEREO probes are about to pass through L4 and L5. Solar observatories often park themselves at L1 while deep space observatories prefer L2. [more] “Their compu
Related Questions
- Why do officials paint over graffiti when all that does is make the wall clean and ready for more? Isn this an enormous waste of time and money?
- To correctly perform SPC on our multicavity molds would require an enormous number of charts. What options do I have with NWA Quality Analyst?
- Why did many dinosaurs grow to such enormous sizes?
